From the Director

It is with great honor and privilege that I take up the role of the Jeffrey Horrell ‘75 and Rodney Rose Director and Chief Curator of the Miami University Art Museum (MUAM). Having recently joined as of August 1, I follow in the footsteps of Dr. Robert Wicks, who steered the museum on a steady keel for the past two decades, while forging new pathways towards exhibitions and programs promoting social justice on topics of race and gender, as well as growing relationships with the Myaamia Tribe through community curation. Bob, thank you for your dedication and years of service!

I greatly look forward to applying my prior experience as a professional in museums and cultural heritage to this important role. I’ve lived and worked in the country of my birth, the United Kingdom at the British Museum, London, and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, and in the United States at the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, and the Corning Museum of Glass, NY. Most recently, I served as Associate Director of the American Center of Research, in Amman, Jordan, carrying out archaeological, research and preservation initiatives. The common thread to my diverse career has been my love of art, history and connecting art and objects with people whether in the past or present!

At the core of our mission, MUAM recognizes and celebrates global artistic and cultural diversity through display, study, publication and programs. This contributes to our approach in preserving and expanding our collections, and teaching about visual culture. Alongside the College of Creative Arts and Miami University as a whole, the Art Museum is also strongly committed to social justice and anti-racism.

There are great opportunities ahead. Future priorities include raising support to expand the museum to better preserve and grow our collections, as well as improve space for visitors, staff, faculty and students in teaching. We will seek support for new endowments for key museum staff, following the generosity of Jeffrey Horrell ‘75 and Rodney Rose in endowing the Director and Chief Curator position. More and more of our collections will be accessible online, an effort taking place alongside other museums across campus through the Museums Miami Center.

I want to recognize and thank the staff of the College of Creative Arts and MUAM who have been so warm and welcoming. I also recognize the contributions of Curator of Education, Cynthia Collins, and Preparator/Building Manager, Mark DeGennaro who both recently retired from the museum after 17 and 27 years of service respectively to the university and local community. We welcome David Dotson, our new Preparator/Building Manager, who joined the museum staff this summer.

I know that challenges we faced during the pandemic will remain with us for some time to come, yet we are resilient and can return stronger than ever. The pandemic provided a creative catalyst within education, museums, and the art world, as well as time and space for reflection. We have seen the emergence of new ideas and technological advances. As we enter this new era, we remain positive and focused on teaching, learning, and sharing in innovative ways with our visitors, including students, faculty and staff, and members of the local community of Oxford and the surrounding area.

I am so excited about our Faculty and Alumni exhibition and related programs, which occurs once every four years – so don’t miss it! I warmly invite you to visit in person as well as engage with our in-person and virtual programs, and to be inspired and share your experience with others. I look forward to getting to know and learning from you all!

John (Jack) D.M. Green Jeffrey Horrell ‘75 and Rodney Rose Director and Chief Curator of the Miami University Art Museum

Congratulations on your retirements Cynthia, Mark and Bob!

A Passion for Arts Education

Cynthia Collins served as the Art Museum’s Curator of Education for 17 years before retiring at the end of June. Beloved by all those who had the opportunity to work with her–especially the Art Museum’s docent corp–Cynthia came to Miami from the Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts. As part of her time with the museum, she developed programs for young audiences such as Adventures in Art and Art Explorers as well as facilitated the Art Museum Student Organization (AMSO), among many other duties. The Art Museum staff will miss in particular Cynthia’s event planning skills. She was truly “the hostess with the mostess.” Best wishes, Cynthia!

Preparator Extraordinaire

Before retiring in June, Mark DeGennaro was the longest-serving staff member at MUAM, having been the Preparator for 27 years as well as Building Manager. Known among other things for his wry sense of humor, Mark did everything from installing artwork to serving wine. With his institutional memory, ability to “find a way” with displays, mounts, storage solutions, security and building maintenance, Mark’s skills were always in demand. A gifted conversationalist, Mark often gave museum visitors informative and impromptu tours as well as suggestions about what to do in Oxford. We will miss seeing you at the museum, Mark, but look forward to running into you at Kroger!

Dedicated to Social Justice

For 20 years, Robert S. Wicks was at the helm of the Miami University Art Museum. He came to MUAM following nearly 20 years as Professor of Art History, specializing in South Asian art, as well as an Assistant Dean for the then School of Fine Arts. Wicks’ tenure at MUAM was highlighted by his commitment to promoting social justice and his dedication to promoting the artistic traditions of the Myaamia Tribe of Oklahoma. Not just a scholar, Wicks was an advocate for museums and placing museums at the center of education at Miami through the creation of Museums Miami. Congratulations Bob, best wishes!

This past April, Dr. Michael Hatch, Assistant Professor of Art History received the Faculty Leader Award at the virtual MUAM annual member meeting.

One of the many contributions Mike has made to MUAM during his time at Miami include his insightful instruction and expertise teaching Art420D, “Art and Its Markets.” He developed this unique course to offer students the opportunity to learn about the exciting world of auction houses and galleries and their place in the artworld. Mike forged a relationship with Akron-based Thomas French Fine Art Galleries and during each of the past three spring semesters, students have studied, in-depth, commissioned prints and then made proposals for additions to the collection. With partial funding from the University’s Center for Career Exploration and Success and his guidance, this collaboration has enhanced not only the acquisitions program, but also benefited the entire College of Creative Arts.

This year, the Art Museum presented two students with the 20202021 Student Leader Award, in recognition of, and appreciation for, their leadership and ongoing contributions. The awards this year went to Grace Bihl (‘21) and Faith Walker (‘21).

Grace began working at the museum in the second semester of her freshman year as the Graphics Student Assistant. During her time at MUAM, she designed exhibition graphics for a dozen different exhibitions including text panels and exhibition title logos, as well as supporting exhibition catalog sheets, fliers, posters and more.

As a Curatorial Intern in the Spring 2019 semester, Faith worked on the development of the Fall 2019 exhibition, Life Cycles: Death. Graduating in May 2021, Walker was a double major in Anthropology and Art History with minors in Archaeology and Museums & Society. Her academic background was instrumental for selecting works to include in the exhibition, and in bridging anthropological and art historical perspectives for the interpretation of objects. Rounding out her museum experience, Faith also helped with collections installation during the Spring 2020 semester, when she assisted Preparator Mark DeGennaro with the Art History Capstone exhibition she co-curated with her peers, Desire, Conflict and Exchange.

Community Partner Larry W. Collins Retires

After 16 years of teaching Drawing and Foundations in the Department of Art, Larry Winston Collins retired in 2021. Originally from Cincinnati, Collins pursued fine arts degrees after working as a graphic designer. His former career is often evident in his striking compositions in which bold forms, engaging color theory and contrasts in positive and negative space create vivid imagery. Collins is well-known in Cincinnati and Columbus through many exhibitions of his work, including several important series that highlight African-American personages, and more recently, racial injustice in America. He was also an important partner in developing the 2018 exhibition, Telling A People’s Story: African-American Children’s Illustrated Literature. In 2021, Collins created Homage to John Lewis (now part of the permanent collection) in honor of longtime MUAM Director Bob Wicks’ recent retirement.

This year, MUAM presented its first Community Partner Award to our longtime presenting sponsor of the Art Explorers program, Lane Public Library. Designed for children ages 3-5 and their caregivers, it offers participants opportunities to engage not only with art, but also storytime and song. Selections from its children’s illustrated literature collection, along with live music performed by the library’s storyteller, (pictured below, Akiko Urayama) set the stage for concepts reinforced by museum exhibitions and complementary art making activity. A bedrock institution in the Oxford community, Lane provides high quality programming that is both educational and engaging, and the Art Museum is deeply appreciative of its support.

Welcome David!

Please join us in welcoming David Dotson to the Art Museum team. Preparator/Building Manager and artist David lives in Darrtown with his wife, also an artist, and daughter. David received his MFA in sculpture from Miami, and was a member of the museum staff for ten years post-graduation. In addition to his Art Museum responsibilities, David is a volunteer firefighter. He also brings a wealth of knowledge about installation practices and displays, among other things, having worked for a time at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Welcome David, we are thrilled to have you!

Collections News

BY LAURA STEWART, COLLECTIONS MANAGER/REGISTRAR

Despite the past pandemic year’s challenges, a great portion of the art and artifacts housed at MUAM remains available to students, scholars and community members either through exhibition display or by viewing appointment.

MUAM has also been actively adding to the collection. For example, a recent commission from retiring art faculty Larry Winston Collins honors former MUAM director Bob Wicks’ commitment to social justice. Titled Homage to John Lewis, the stunning painted portrait with three-dimensional, found-object frame graced the museum lobby throughout the late spring and summer of 2021. Collins’ commissioned artwork will be on display Spring 2022 in the regularly offered Recent Acquisitions: Collection Highlights exhibition, and his Department of Art Faculty and Alumni Exhibition submission–a series of four prints created about and during the pandemic–is on view now.

Part of the sculptural frame for Homage to John Lewis consists of relief scenes from Lewis’s long record of Civil Rights activism. Collins created both the vignettes and Lewis’ likeness by building up layers of a plaster-like material and then painting the forms, alluding to classical friezes while at the same time commemorating the life and deeds of the U.S. Congressman.

As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963-1966, Lewis was instrumental in leading the 1963 “March on Washington” and the 1965 marches to Selma from Montgomery, Alabama. During 1964’s Freedom Summer, Lewis encouraged college students to join with SNCC to help register black voters in Mississippi. Around 800 activists gathered for Freedom Summer training right here at Oxford’s Western College for Women, now a part of Miami University. Lewis was awarded the Freedom Summer award from Miami in 2018.

Collins’ Homage to John Lewis honors the legacy of Lewis, celebrates the altruism of Dr. Wicks, and evinces the “Love and Honor” sentiments upon which Miami University prides itself. MUAM is thrilled to have this talented Miami University Art Faculty Emeriti’s remarkable tribute become part of its permanent collection.

Larry W. Collins (American, b.1955); Homage to John Lewis, 2021; Mixed media painting/wall sculpture, 36" x 36" x 7"; MUAM Commission in Honor of Director Robert S. Wicks and his commitment to social justice on the occasion of his retirement

Learn more about our collection of over 17,000 works on our web site at www.MiamiOH.edu/ ArtMuseum. Make arrangements to study works not on view by contacting Collections Manager/ Registrar Laura Stewart at stewarle@MiamiOH.edu.

Miami University Art Museum Exhibitions Jan 25–Jun 11, 2022 COMING Spring 2022

From the Ground Up

(Douglass Gallery)

Pottery exhibitions typically examine how ceramics are painted, carved, or glazed and what they say about the culture in which they were created. While these attributes are important, they commonly overlook how the maker/artist constructed the object. By looking at the materials, technology, and methods of pottery-making across different cultures, it is possible to demonstrate the complexity and diversity of pottery processes that are tied to culture, technology, ecology and form.

Theme: Race & Visual Representation

(McKie Gallery)

Students in the Capstone Seminar will engage with the collection of the Miami University Art Museum to curate an exhibition on the visual representation of race. Development of the exhibition will be informed by an exploration of theories and conceptions of race and racial difference from a variety of cultures and time periods. Students will become museum curators by developing the title and scope of the show, selecting and researching pieces for the exhibition, writing all didactic labels and materials, planning the layout of the gallery space, and designing an exhibition catalog with help from Professor Pepper Stetler and the Museum staff.

Recent Acquisitions (2018-2021)

(Farmer Gallery)

Each year the Miami University Art Museum adds to the growing permanent collection through gifts and bequests from alumni and other donors who support the visual arts. The holdings are also enhanced by select purchases from auctions and galleries. The Miami University Art Museum celebrates and recognizes its commitment to global, artistic, and cultural diversity through the acquisition of works that represent a range of times, cultures, styles, and artists.

McGuffey Moments

A Look Back - Mid-20th Century Faculty Artists

STEVE GORDON, ADMINISTRATOR

This fall, the artwork of Miami faculty and alumni are being showcased in three art museum galleries. Their works serve as visual reminders that Miami is enriched and enlivened by a diverse, robust and talented arts community. Whether conventional, contemplative, or at times provocative, Miami’s museums seek to collect and conserve a wide range of works produced by active faculty and alumni.

During the mid-20th century, Robert Bryce Butler, Edwin Fulwider and Marston Hodgin were three of the university’s most productive and widely recognized faculty artists. The 1950s marked a period of great expansion for the University as new buildings dotted the Oxford campus during the post war years. Two buildings, the Fine Arts Building – now Hiestand Hall (1957) and Herron Gym – now Phillips Hall (1962), were highlighted by striking allegorical limestone panels carved by Butler (1923-1998). Butler began teaching sculpture at Miami in 1955 and was chair of the Art Department from 1968-1992. Among Butler’s most familiar works was his Sesquicentennial Medallion used as a symbol of the University’s 150th celebration in 1959. The bronze medallion donated to the McGuffey Museum in 2019 by John (’70) and Sue Clover (’71), was originally presented to President John D. Millett.

Marston Hodgin (1903-2003) professor, prolific artist and founder of Miami’s Department of Art, enjoyed an artistic career that spanned seven decades. His works depicted local landscapes and landmarks, whether oils on canvas or watercolors on paper. McGuffey Museum has five Hodgins, including Hueston Woods (1940), the most recent example donated to the museum by Bonnie Myers Busboom. Edwin Fulwider (1913-2003), like Hodgin, was drawn to sylvan landscapes and rustic structures, especially old growth beech woods. A native of Bloomington and a graduate of the Herron Art School in Indianapolis, Fulwider taught drawing and painting at Miami in 1940, returning to Miami in 1949 where he was Professor of Art until 1973 and also served as Chair (19631968). Inspired by Walter Havighurst’s The Miami Years, Fulwider’s Miami Mural (1960) once covered the west wall of the Heritage Room until it was removed in the 1980s.

Butler, Fulwider and Hodgin were in a real sense, artists in residence. Their extensive body of work continues to resonate. McGuffey Museum and the Miami University Art Museum are pleased to exhibit and conserve the works of these and many other of Miami’s talented faculty artists.

Above left to right: Sesquicentennial Medallion (1959) by Robert Bryce Butler, Hueston Woods (1940) by Marston Hodgin and Harrison Hall (ca. 1955) by Edwin Fulwider.

McGuffey House & Museum

401 E. Spring St. Oxford, OH 45056 (513) 529-8380 Thursday-Saturday 1-5 PM McGuffeyMuseum@MiamiOH.edu MiamiOH.edu/McGuffey-Museum

Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men

Celebrating “Safekeeper” Walter I. Farmer.

BY JACK GREEN, JEFFREY HORRELL ‘75 & RODNEY ROSE DIRECTOR & CHIEF CURATOR

An exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum tells the story of an important group of paintings, the “Berlin 202,” and focuses on the legacy of “Monuments Man” and MUAM founding donor, Walter I. Farmer (1911–1997, Miami ‘35). The exhibition highlights the protection of and restitution of artworks in Europe during and after World War II. Farmer was a Captain in the US Army Corps of Engineers and a member of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program. At the close of the war, he directed the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point, safeguarding artworks from German museums and private collections. When faced with a directive to select two-hundred paintings intended for a traveling exhibit to the United States, Farmer, alongside others, was concerned they might be treated as “spoils of war,” thus setting a dangerous precedent.

Robert Edsel, founder of the Monuments Men Foundation spoke at the exhibition opening, paying tribute to Farmer’s strong ethics. Farmer, with support of others, wrote the “Wiesbaden Manifesto,” which impacted decisions leading to the return of the paintings to Germany. Alongside loans of some of the paintings of the “Berlin 202,” the exhibition also presents artworks Farmer gifted to the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America, is open through October 3, 2021 at the Cincinnati Art Museum. A volume of the same title by co-curators Peter J. Bell and Kristi A. Nelson (GILES, 2020) accompanies the exhibition. Farmer’s memoirs are published in the book The Safekeepers: A Memoir of the Arts at the End of World War II (de Gruyter, 2000).

Alumnus Walter I. Farmer (Miami '35) with the bust of Queen Nefertiti when he served as a one of America's Monuments Men during World War II.

Interested in learning more about Walter I. Farmer and his contributions to the Miami University Art Museum? Visit tinyurl.com/wfarmer

DEPARTMENT OF ART

Aug 24-Dec 11, 2021 Douglass, McKie & Farmer Galleries

Faculty Alumni Exhibition 2021

MIAMI UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM

The Miami University Art Museum staff is excited to present this exhibition in collaboration with the Department of Art. Every four years, the exhibition provides current and emeriti faculty, along with alumni from the past 50 years, with the opportunity to showcase work created over the past four years.

The alumni were selected by current and emeriti faculty and invited to participate. Alumni works were juried for this exhibition by Robert Robbins, Chair and Professor, Department of Art, Miami University (Oxford); Jason E. Shaiman, Miami University Art Museum; Sherri Krazl, Miami University Art Museum; and Laura Stewart, Miami University Art Museum. Combined, this exhibition presents 64 works of art created by 13 current faculty, 4 emeriti faculty and 39 alumni.

Special appreciation is extended to Rob Robbins, for his collaboration. Additional recognition goes out to Logan Bowers, Curatorial Intern (Spring 2021), for her work in the planning and designing of the exhibition. We also offer sincere gratitude to Cassidy Gebhart, undergraduate Communication Design major, Department of Art, for designing the title logo and catalog for the exhibition. Check out the exhibition catalog online at tinyurl.com/ facalumfa21exhcat